Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton scored huge victories in New York's presidential nominating contests on Tuesday as both candidates took giant steps towards capturing their respective parties' nominations.
Trump did even better than pre-election polls in his home state, Real Clear Politics reports. With 96 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, Trump led with 60 percent of the vote, claiming 89 of the state's 95 GOP delegates. Ohio Gov. John Kasich was a far second with 25 percent of the vote, managing to get 3 delegates. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz got only 15 percent of the vote and zero delegate.
Trump now has a total of 845 delegates, needing just 392 more to clinch the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July. Cruz's delegate count remains at 559 while Kasich has 147.
"We don't have much of a race anymore based on what I'm seeing on television," Trump told cheering supporters at a victory party at his Trump Tower in Manhattan. "We are really, really rocking."
The 69-year-old billionaire said the Republican party establishment forces that have tried to prevent him from a first-ballot victory at the convention in July "are in trouble," Newsmax reports.
He once again took a shot at the "crooked" system that has allowed Cruz to gain delegates in a series of recent state conventions.
Trump said his resounding victory in New York would make it almost mathematically impossible for Cruz to win the nomination on the first ballot at the party's national convention.
If Trump does not secure enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot at the July 18-21 convention in Cleveland, delegates would be allowed to switch to other candidates, giving Cruz and even Kasich a chance of beating Trump.
Cruz belittled Trump's victory, saying it's just "a politician winning his home state.
He continued to implore Republicans to unite around his candidacy. "We must unite the Republican Party because doing so is the first step in uniting all Americans," Cruz said in remarks read off a teleprompter, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Clinton's victory in New York snapped the winning streak of her lone rival Bernie Sanders, making it nearly impossible for the latter to overtake her commanding lead in the delegate count to win the nomination.
Clinton scooped at least 135 new delegates in New York, increasing her delegate total to 1,893 as she nears the 2,382 threshold to win the nomination outright, according to All Clear Politics.
Sanders took 104 new delegates to hike his total to 1,180.
Both Trump and Clinton are expected to continue their winning streak next Tuesday when five other Northeastern states hold their primaries.
"The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," Clinton told a cheering, chanting crowd at a Manhattan hotel, noting that she had gained more than 10 million votes and won in every region of the country.
The 68-year-old presidential front-runner reached out to Sanders supporters amid the heated campaign rivalry.
"There is much more that unites us than divides us," she told them.
Despite the loss, Sanders vowed to keep competing.
"We've got a shot to victory," the 74-year-old Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We have come a very long way in the last 11 months, and we are going to fight this out until the end of the process."
